Mozilla Firebird 0.6.1 Released

Monday July 28th, 2003

mozilla.org has just released a minor upgrade to their Mozilla Firebird 0.6 milestone, to fix a few key issues regarding security and stability, including the autocomplete crash. Builds are now available, and the 0.6.1 Release Notes and other documentation are being pushed to the site currently.

We expect a 0.7 release to happen later in the Summer, and hope for a 1.0 prior to the end of the year. More information is available about the release plan in the Roadmap doc.

This 0.6.1 doesn't know how to handle some sites w. bad MIME types, like members.aol.com and others I've come across. This regression makes it impossible for me to recommend it to most friends, and I certainly will be inconvenienced by it enough that I'll need to skip this milestone. I seriously hope the option to toggle auto-scrolling will be implemented on the trunk soon enough before other new bugs hit that I'll be able to enjoy the many other enhancements contained in this release.

How is this a regression? As far as I can remember, Mozilla has always had a problem with sites that send the wrong MIME type (like sending images as text/plain or text/html). There has been talk in the forums about an extension to fix this. Personally, I have a couple issues with this:
1) Something like this should probably be built in, not an extension, as most (windows) people will probably switch back to IE seeing problems like this.
2) This is really a server problem, but most sites don't care because IE tends to do things based on the extension, overriding the MIME type in the header. Too many sites completely ignore the non-IE users.

Boo. I just finished uploading the new Windows Installer for Mozilla Firebird 0.6.1 final. It includes the final version of Mozilla Firebird 0.6.1, and I believe that I also added/fixed the Windows registry support for Java. Although someone will have to try that one out for themselves, as I don't use Java and don't have it installed, but I'm pretty sure it works, as the correct Registry value has been set when I examined my Windows 2000 registry. :)

You can download the Mozilla Firebird 0.6.1 Windows Installer at http://www.apparition.org/apps/MozillaFirebird-0.6.1-setup.exe

The article makes it sound like they've actually come up with a plan on how to move Firebird in as the main browser. This is what the roadmap has to say about it:

"It's clear now that we will not be able to switch to Mozilla Firebird by the Mozilla 1.5 final milestone. Instead, we expect Mozilla 1.5 to coincide with Mozilla Firebird 0.7. But we intend to implement the new application architecture in the next several milestones, till most of the community is won over to the new apps."

Firebird has made it undesirable for me to switch from Mozilla because there must be some overlap time during which I need to use the same bookmarks file (use mozilla BM file in MFB). However, for some reason i disagree with, MFB changes all BM Groups to a subdirectory. I prefer reall BM Groups and now my mozilla Groups are ruined by MFB. :-(

I also have little interest in installing a bazillion (maybe slightly less) "extensionss" just to get needed functionality (e.g., "Close all tabs").

Put back the needed features and unbreak the Bookmark Groups and I will be glad to switch to Mozilla Firebird. ;)

We've been over this before. Bookmark folders are more intuitive than Bookmark Groups. "Close all Tabs" is a dataloss waiting to happen. These things are not going to be changed just because that's the way they were done in Mozilla.

Folders are NOT more intuitive than anything else. And yes, I used IE for years. I much prefer Mozilla's use of a single bookmark file to the million+1 folders/files of IE. Easy of export is the key reason that NS/Moz ruled in that dept.

And I miss the tab opening/closing options. I use TBE, but they don't allow you to re-order them to the Moz order. Data loss is one of those things that should be more on the user than the developer (in the 'Close All Other Tabs' sense) - I think the warning is now sufficient, and could be modified to warn when closing 'All Other Tabs'.

Just wondering if there are any GTK+ 2 builds out there for FireBird 0.6.1. After using Xft and GTK+ 2 builds for months, there is no way I'm going back to old clunky aliased text on Linux. BTW, shouldn't that be the default for Linux now that all modern distributions include GTK2 support?

If Mozilla.org started distributing Xft + GTK 2 nightlies I would probably go back to using the latest nightly every day, just like I did back in the Mozilla 0.8 days...

OK thanks,
I'll try suggesting this in the FB forum. I seriously doubt most modern Linux desktop users are willing to use any more GTK-1 apps... I know I'm not. The nightlies will get much more (and better) Linux testing if they are at least optionally offered as GTK-2 builds. Besides, no distro ships without GTK-2 enabled in Moz anymore.

I've noticed one regression already. Not sure why, but the "shadowed-out" version of buttons on my bulletin board no longer appear. Normally you have these grayed-out versions, then when you mouseover them it's replaced with a normal, bright version of the button. But now with 0.6.1 only the bright version when you mouseover them appears... move the mouse away, and the shadow version isn't there. For an example, compare this page with 0.6 and 0.6.1:

I use the FireBird on my Mac and the Mozilla on my Windows XP machine.

I noticed very interesting fact with the FireBird. Why is it that big? 33MB when installed. Windows version is smaller than Mac version,
but there are more problems. For example, the menubar icon customization panel is not sized well, etc.
So, someday the size of the Windows version can be as big as that for the Mac version.

I think stand-alone version should be small. However the Firebird is not. ( What is the size of the Mozilla? I don't remember it exactly, but
the Firebird is too big when the Mozilla is considered. )

FB 0.6 took 28.1MB on my Linux box, whereas Mozilla 1.0, on the same box, took... 32.1MB! When you consider there's (among other things) no mail/news client in FB, why is it so damn big compared to MAS?